History of transhumanism

The history of transhumanism is complicated and relatively poorly documented prior to the internet age. However the dynamics of the movement are accelerating in recent years as more people are drawn to it without a strong sense of history.

1923 - British scientist and Marxist J. B. S. Haldane publishes Daedalus; or, Science and the Future which offers an early vision of transhumanist thought, particularly concerned with the ethical implications of the advancement of science. He also commented on what has in recent years become known as the "yuck factor"[1]

1929 - British scientist John Desmond Bernal publishes The World, the Flesh and the Devil, introducing ideas central to transhumanism including liveable space habitats, and the future changes science could bring to human intelligence and physicality.

1931 - Amazing Stories publishes "The Jameson Satellite", a short story by Neil R. Jones, about a man whose corpse is sent into orbit, where it remains near absolute zero for millions of years until a race of cyborgs discovers it, defrosts its brain, and installs it in a robot's body.

1932 - Brave New World is published by Aldous Huxley, brother of Julian Huxley, describing a transhumanist dystopia where psychological conditioning, promiscuous sexuality, biotechnology, and the opiate drug "soma" keep the population placid in a static, conformist caste society[1]

1940 - W. D. Lighthall is the first person known to use the word 'transhumanism' in the English language. He writes of '[St] Paul's Transhumanism' possibly in a homage to a 'transhuman change', a heavenwards journey featured in the 1814 English translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy.[4][5]

1945 - The reaction to the Holocaust where over 6 million Jews and other groups undesirable to the Nazi regime were systemically killed mostly marks the end of western affinity for eugenics and similar programmes[1]

1948 - Inspired by "The Jameson Satellite" cryonics founder Robert Ettinger publishes his short story "The Penultimate Trump," in Startling Stories. In it, Ettinger proposes cryonics as "one-way medical time travel to the future."

1950's to 1970's

1951 - Noted eugenicist and evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley uses the term "transhumanism" in a lecture delivered in Washington DC titled Knowledge, Morality and Destiny. Huxley describes his philosophy as "the idea of humanity attempting to overcome its limitations and to arrive at fuller fruition."[7]

1954 - Jerry Sohl publishes his sci-fi story "The Altered Ego," in which a man is able to make a digital duplicate of his mind and access it after his death. This marks the first appearance of mind-uploading in fiction.

1957 - "The word “transhumanism” first gained significant recognition when used by Julian Huxley, a distinguished biologist (who was also the first director‐general of UNESCO and a founder of the World Wildlife Fund). In his second edition Religion Without Revelation (1957), he wrote:

The human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself – not just sporadically, an individual here in one way, an individual there in another way – but in its entirety, as humanity. We need a name for this new belief. Perhaps transhumanism will serve: man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature"[1]

1959 - Physicist Richard P. Feynman presents the lecture, There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom, suggesting the possibility of the manipulation of atoms in synthetic chemistry. The lecture will later inspire the field of nanotechnology.

1965 - Cryptographer and computer scientist Irving John Good publishes "Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine," the first proposal for a possible future intelligence explosion in machine learning.

1967 - Philosopher Harry Overstreet make the first mention "extropy" — the attempt to counteract the natural law of entropy — in a 1967 volume of the journal, Physis.

1967 - The first person is cryogenically frozen at the Cryonics Society of California by the society's president — Robert Nelson, a television repairman. The operation was ultimately deemed unsuccessful and Nelson's clients were "lost."[8]

1972 - Fred & Linda Chamberlain establish the Alcor Society for Solid State Hypothermia, later renamed to the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, in Los Angeles. Fred Chamberlain had previously worked as a space program engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

1972 - Apollo 17 becomes the final manned mission to the Moon.

1972 - The Club of Rome publishes The Limits to Growth, positing dire projections of a growing global population and dwindling resources.

1986 - Partly in response to The Limits to Growth, Eric Drexler, then research affiliate with MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, publishes The Engines of Creation, which proposes the theory of nanotechnology; "‘molecular assemblers,' devices capable of positioning atoms and molecules for precisely defined reactions in almost any environment," as a potential solution to Earth's limited resources.

1990's

1991 - The Extropians Mailing list[9] is established, the first major online hub for transhumanist ideas to be exchanged. Several prominent writers, theorists, and technologists in the movement regularly post to the boards, which continues to be active today.

2007

2008

Peter Thiel donates $500,000 to fund the The Seasteading Institute to establish experimental research facilities in international waters. Thiel will donate over one million dollars to the institute.[20]

2009

Eliezer Yudkowsky publishes the rationalist blog and forum, LessWrong, where discussion on artificial intelligence culminates in the infamous thought experiment, Roko's Basilik and banning of its discussion on the forums.

2013

Larry Page establishes Calico Labs with Arthur D. Levinson, ex-chairman of Apple, as part of Google (since restructured as a subsidiary of Alphabet). Calico pursues a cure for aging and associated diseases.